


Where is My Mind

by grayimperia



Category: One Piece
Genre: Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Whole Cake Island Arc Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-23 00:16:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30047001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayimperia/pseuds/grayimperia
Summary: “What are you thinking about?” Luffy asks, pressing his hand to Sanji’s forehead. “Sanji goes somewhere else sometimes. You’re here and then you’re not, but you always come back so it’s okay. Unless it’s not a good place?”Sanji doesn’t think he has the words to describe what goes on in his head when his mind is gone.-Sanji’s last thoughts when he gets hit by an avalanche are of the ocean.
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy & Vinsmoke Sanji, Monkey D. Luffy/Vinsmoke Sanji, Vinsmoke Reiju & Vinsmoke Sanji
Comments: 6
Kudos: 96





	Where is My Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Set during Drum Island. Whole Cake Island spoilers.

Sanji’s adrift in the sea, but it’s okay. He opens his eyes underwater and takes a deep breath, letting the waves rush into his lungs. But it doesn’t hurt. 

The fish swim around him in splashes of red and orange and purple, like a submerged sunset. They must mistake him for one of them, a big, funny looking yellow fish, because they show no fear as they flick their tails in front of his face and just out of reach of his grasping hands. 

Sanji swims deeper, the blue seas somehow bright at the bottom. 

Seahorses and sea kings. Manta Rays and giant sea monkeys. Panda sharks and an entire island whale. And him, down in the depths of all of the blues. 

Then Sanji hears giggling behind him and running feet. The ocean dissipates and the book is grabbed out of his hands, his head smacked against the bookshelf for good measure. Yonji and Niji kick his stomach as they tell him it’s time for training and that their father will make their beating look like a slap on the wrist by comparison if he shows up limping like a weakling again. 

But they’re of no concern. Ichiji retrieves his book from the floor, and Sanji scrambles past the swinging legs to get to his feet. His ears are still ringing from the collision his head took with the shelf seconds before, and Sanji can barely hear his voice as he shouts, “That’s mine!”

Ichiji snorts as he roughly flips through the pages. “That explains why it’s so worthless then.”

Sanji tries to snatch it back, but Ichiji’s steel hands feel like a vice as they clamp down on his fingers. Sanji winces but keeps shouting, “Give it back! You don’t want it, anyways!”

“I don’t,” Ichiji says. “But that doesn’t mean I want you to have it. It’s embarrassing. Help me get rid of it.” With his hand gripped by Ichiji, Sanji can’t let go when Ichiji snaps his fingers and forces him to help snap the book’s spine in half at the same time. 

They laugh and leave him in a pile of tattered pages. Sanji takes a deep breath as he holds his hand close to his chest and breathes the water in. There are fish in the sea. But none of them are red or blue or green. Just happy yellow fish who are worried about him but excited that he’s come to visit. 

He gathers the pages back together as best he can, and the fish tell him all about how he can put it back together with some string and some tape. His mother will be upset—she always looks so sad when Sanji tells her something bad happened, so he tries his best not to. 

But she’ll forgive him for the book if he brings her a picnic basket and says that he’s really, really sorry. One of his fish friends tells him that’s a great idea, especially since the mice seemed to really like the cupcakes he made yesterday. If they all work together and try again today, they can create something even better. 

A mermaid calls out to him but he blinks, and Reiju is standing in front of him with a first aid kit. “How bad is it this time?” 

Sanji holds out his hand with his two broken fingers. “Barely felt it,” he whispers. “It’s not as bad if I just think about other things.”

She sighs and kneels, pushing his hair out of the way to get a better view of the bruise on his forehead. “But they’ll just get the jump on you if you space out too much.”

Sanji knows she’s right. He realizes Reiju’s right about most things. But the same tricks she uses don’t work for him. Pretending it doesn’t hurt only gets him so far. 

Reiju gives him an ice pack and tells him to hold it to his bruise with his unbroken hand while she figures out what to do with his fingers. “I know you love that book, but it’s not worth picking a fight over.”

But, Sanji thinks, playing pretend gets him further than nothing. 

-

“Also, people in the north,” Luffy says, “like to sing all day.”

“And why is that?” Sanji asks. He takes a moment to light another cigarette, letting the heat from the match warm his face for just a second. 

Luffy smiles. “Because singing is fun! And fun things warm you up. Since it’s so cold, they probably have to do lots and lots of singing.”

“So no sleeping and lots of singing. Is that what they do all night?”

“Yup! I wish people in the east didn’t have to sleep either. It’d be fun to stay up all night and sing.”

“Maybe once we get a shitty musician.”

“Yeah! Are you sure you can’t play any instruments, Sanji? I asked Usopp and he said that he was one of the greatest musicians in the whole world but that he needed perspiration.”

“Inspiration,” Sanji corrects. “And unless you like shitty piano playing—”

Luffy nearly bounces in place, and Sanji can physically see him remembering that Nami’s on his back. “You are a musician! Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

Sanji waves a hand. “Like I said, I’m shit at it.”

“So?” 

Sanji has heard Luffy’s offkey singing and seen his clumsy dancing. He’s terrible at both but continues to do so even when his dance moves are so misplaced they almost tumble him off the Merry’s deck. 

“You wouldn’t like hearing the same song over and over again,” Sanji says. “It’d get boring fast.”

Luffy nods, seeming to think his point over. “Maybe. But if it’s a really good song, it’d still be fun! You can just make up new words to sing along each time. That’s what I do when I can’t remember a song.”

Sanji fondly recalls Nami yelling at Luffy to shut up, getting so frustrated that she shouted over an entire crowd of people how his made-up lyrics didn’t even rhyme. His response was to sing even louder, and louder still after a (graceful) punch to the head. 

“I don’t know,” Sanji says. “Just making shit up stops working after a while. At least in my experience.”

“Why?”

Sanji wasn’t expecting the question, and he turns to see that Luffy looks genuinely curious. “I guess I’m not that creative,” Sanji decides on. “I run out of shit to make up, and after that, I’m just left with reality. Which is also shitty.”

“No,” Luffy says. “It’s full of adventure!” Sanji raises an eyebrow, and Luffy looks over his shoulder at Nami. “Okay, right now it’s not very fun, but it will be once we get to the doctor. Hey, hey! Help me think of a song we can sing to Nami when she gets better.”

“As much as I would like to sing Nami-san a love song,” Sanji says, rolling his eyes. “Were you paying attention to anything I just said?”

“Yup! And if you run out of perspiration like Usopp, I can help!”

“Inspiration,” Sanji corrects for the second time, but Luffy’s already off, singing about people in the north who also like to sing and play pretend all day.

-

Reiju lets him hide in her room sometimes. Sanji tried to make a deal the first time, that he’d be quiet and wouldn’t bother her and make her snacks as a thank you. But Reiju glanced past him to make sure no one was around before pulling him into her room and making her own deal. 

His brothers’ favorite games usually ended with Sanji nursing a broken limb, and Reiju didn’t seem to play games at all. She’d show up to training, laugh politely in front of the others, then disappear to her room. But when Sanji was six and asked for sanctuary, a glimmer appeared in her eyes as she sat him in front of her wardrobe and announced they were playing dress up. 

Sanji sits cross legged on the floor, his book in his lap while Reiju styles his hair into a mess of braids and pigtails. “I wish it was a little longer like mom’s,” she says when she finishes. She looks over her work before holding out a hand mirror. “Take a look.”

She had slipped a sundress over his clothes and the straps fall around his shoulders. His hair is thoroughly mused, and Sanji reaches up to feel a butterfly barrette clipped to his bangs. Reiju grins as she looks over his shoulder into the mirror. “I wish I had makeup. Then we could play princesses.”

“But you’re already a princess?”

Reiju reaches past him to flip through the pages in his book. She stops on a story Sanji doesn’t like—one about a girl whose family hurts her and her only friends are the animals who scurry around her home. On the last page the girl’s in a ballgown, and Reiju points to her. “I mean a princess like this, not a real one. ”

Sanji stares hard at the page, trying to see what Reiju does. “Do you ever imagine you’re a fairytale princess?”

“No,” she says. “It’s just fun to dress up sometimes. Here.” She turns back a few pages until she finds a prince. “You know your life isn’t like his, right?”

The prince in the story lives in a castle that’s warm with servants who are always happy to see him and a family that cares about him. The would-be princess’s life doesn’t let Sanji imagine he’s somewhere else like the prince’s does, and he turns to press the book into Reiju’s hands. “Can you read it to me? But only the happy parts?”

Reiju’s mouth twists into a frown before she pats the space next to her and Sanji scrambles to lean into her side. “Okay, but only because you were a good doll for me,” she says, tugging on one of his braids. 

Reiju’s skin is hard and metallic, but not as unyielding as his brothers’. He still knows exactly what she is, but if he closes his eyes and only listens to her voice, it seems to matter less. “Reiju,” he says when she finishes the story. “Do you ever imagine that a prince will come and rescue us?”

“No.” She closes the book. “I don’t.”

-

The rabbits are fucking annoying. Sanji jumps over another one, while Luffy leaps to the side. 

“So how about this,” Luffy says. “People from snowy countries don’t sleep and they sing all day. _And_ when it’s sunny, they all go outside and lay on the ground like cats.”

A rabbit tries to take his head off, and Sanji ducks. “And why would they do that?”

“To have fun when it is warm!”

“If you’re from a snowy country and you just go outside and lie in the sun, you won’t have fun. You’ll just get shitty burns.”

Luffy puffs out his cheeks as he bounces over a rabbit aiming for his feet. “Oh yeah? How do you know?”

From experience, Sanji thinks. “Think logically. They’re not used to the sun, so it hurts.”

“No,” Luffy says back as if Sanji’s the one acting childishly. “The sun’s great! I play in the sun everyday, and I don’t get burned.”

“You’re not from a snowy country!” Sanji snaps as two rabbits lunge for him at once. “And will these shitty things fuck off!?”

The world responds with a resounding _no_ , as the ground begins to shake and the snow ahead of them starts to rise up in waves. Everything is a blur of bad decisions until they’re on a tree trunk and Nami and Luffy are about to be seriously hurt by a rocky outcropping coming up too fast. 

Sanji makes the decision immediately, and he doesn’t regret it even as Luffy screams for him. 

The cold of the snow doesn’t help ease the shooting pain in his back. Instead, Sanji feels like he’s freezing and burning—as snapped in two as his spine. 

He’s still conscious as the avalanche rolls over him. Sanji’s last thoughts are of the ocean. Deep and blue and full of life. He hovers above his drowning body, the water flooding his mouth and lungs, painful in a way his fantasies usually aren’t. 

It’s been a long time since he severed his mind so completely from reality, but Sanji also knows it’s been a long time since the pain was so bad he thought he was dying. The fish are easy to see because the water’s so clear, even if it’s freezing. Sanji looks up towards the sun peeking through into the depths as if it were trying to reach down to where he floats in the dark. 

Sanji tries desperately to keep his eyes open, and it’s strange that this all feels so real because he thought his ability to whisk himself away to the sea so completely had died out on the open ocean.

-

When everything is at its coldest and darkest, everything becomes magic. The walls of his cell and the mask on his face are washed away and he’s standing on the ocean floor, pointing up at all the creatures swimming overhead. 

Sanji tugs on his mother’s hand and she laughs as he lists off every fish he can think of and starts making up names when he runs out. 

He stays on the well worn page of his book and on the ocean floor for so long, he doesn’t even hear the key click in the lock until his brothers are swinging the door to his cell open. But then they leave, and there are new bruises on his back and stomach that fade when Sanji swims out to sea again. 

As long as he can see the ocean, Sanji thinks to himself as he stares down at the drawing of his dream, he can live through anything.

When Reiju decides that enough is enough, Sanji thinks that if he weren’t already sobbing, he would have started crying when he got to see the sea for real. 

-

Luffy’s hands hurt, and he really wishes he hadn’t pulled off one of Sanji’s mittens. His rubber skin and bones ache from the cold as digs up every pile of snow that looks like it could hide a person. He can’t imagine what it must be like to be buried deep beneath one without any protection. 

But he keeps digging. 

The last time Luffy remembers being this terrified for one of his friends’ lives, Zoro was bleeding out after being nearly cut in two. The time before that, Sabo never came back.

Luffy’s bare legs begin to cramp up from kneeling in the snow, and he looks up from the hole he’s dug out across the white sea before him. He brushes off some of the ice clinging to his vest as he stands, stretching his neck high to look for any signs of dark clothes or bright yellow hair. 

But it’s not that easy. Luffy keeps digging. 

He finds Sanji dragged further from the cliff that had almost killed them all than he first assumed he could be. Luffy’s hands are raw, bloody, numb and tremble so badly when he finally touches something that isn’t snow and ice. He yanks Sanji to the surface too hard and too fast once he’s able to curl his stiff fingers around his torso. 

Luffy presses his ear to Sanji’s chest. There’s blood streaking down his face and through his coat, and both of their body’s are so cold Luffy can’t even tell if he feels body heat through the layer of ice caked into Sanji’s clothes. 

In the absolute stillness, Luffy hears what he’s looking for and only then does he take a second to catch his breath and smile. He braces both of his hands on Sanji’s shoulders and gives him a little shake. “Don’t do that again.”

Sanji doesn’t respond, but Luffy imagines that he’d argue, pick a fight about who could call who reckless. Luffy gives his shoulder another pat. “Captain’s orders,” he says before pulling him into his arms, finally believing in the warmth that comes from their contact. 

-

The other cooks on the orbit tell him he’s too old for fairytales and way, way too old to have imaginary friends. They’re all wrong, of course, because Sanji is living a fairytale. Maybe he misses Reiju and feels lonely sometimes, but he’s free out on the water. 

And anything can happen at sea, which sounds so promising until something does happen. 

At first there is endless boredom, but watching the rolling waves only inspires more stories about what lies beneath them. With nothing but his own thoughts for company, Sanji’s fantasies grow, becoming increasingly complex until he can get lost in his own head for hours. 

He envisions magical seas, but he also dreams up another version of himself. Himself as the kind of prince he wished he had been. Strong and dashing and really, really good at cooking. Everyone liked him, especially princesses, and he lived in a rose colored castle at sea, filled with people who were always happy to see him because he could always make them happy. 

On the twenty-fifth day after running through his food supply, Sanji begins to hallucinate. 

Every inch of his skin is raw and blistered from the sun. His makeshift shelter collapsed days ago, and the best Sanji can do is huddle in the shadows casted by the rocks when the sun shines on the shitty pirate’s side of hell. It hurts to move, and as he gets skinnier and skinnier, it starts to feel as if the sun is bleaching his bones straight through his skin. 

The air literally swims in front of him, and he learns not to grab at the fish floating in front of his eyes because otherwise he’ll fall and scrape his already brutalized body. Sanji sees his mother and Reiju and even dreams that his father changed his mind and is launching a party to come rescue him. 

That’s when he knows he’s going to lose his mind completely if his reality doesn’t change soon. But the sea doesn’t care about his dreams, and Sanji would start crying if he had the strength left for that. 

When he approaches the old man and sees what he’s done, the final piece of his fantasy dies even when the shitty pirate starts to talk about dreams. The old man is even stiffer and more brittle than Reiju’s metal skin, but Sanji still huddles against him as he promises to help fulfill his dreams even if he can’t truly believe in his own anymore. 

Sanji stays by the old man’s side, his thoughts swimming. Eventually he brushes one of his skeletal hands through Sanji’s ratty hair. “Go to the other side. We won’t get rescued if we’re both watching the same section of ocean.”

Sanji’s in a daze and doesn’t respond. The old man’s dry throat wheezes what might have supposed to have been a laugh. “Dreaming already, Eggplant?”

“No,” he snaps. “Of course not. Shitty old man.”

The old man gives another strangled wheeze. “There’s nothing wrong if you were.”

Sanji curls closer to the old man and thinks of Reiju. Fantasies don’t help people. People help people. 

His mother had given him his book of fairytales before he could even read, and told him how important it was to have a little magic—that life wouldn’t be worth living without it. 

Sanji squeezes his eyes shut and tries to imagine himself as a prince again. One who could save himself and the old man, fulfill both their stupid dreams. It feels wrong somehow, but the old man presses a hand to the top of his head again. 

“Still alive, Eggplant?” he says, rapping his knuckles lightly on the top of Sanji’s skull. “Seems like you get lost in this thing for hours. Be careful. You never know where you’ll end up.”

Sanji thinks, _as long as it’s anywhere but here_ and tells him to shut up.

-

Sanji feels someone’s hot breath against his face, which would be worrying if he couldn’t immediately identify the smell of meat. His neck feels like it’s going to shatter if he turns his head to the side, so he only gets a three-quarters view of Luffy’s grin when he blinks his eyes open. 

“Sanji!” arms are flung around his shoulders, which hurts. Then Luffy pulls back so they’re practically nose to nose. “You’re awake! The doctor lady said you need to lie down, so don’t get up okay!?”

Luffy’s volume makes him wince, and Sanji is pleasantly surprised to find his arms work well enough to help him push Luffy off of him. His head feels awful and his throat is tight, but he manages to ask, “How’s Nami-san?”

His croaked voice makes Luffy perk up and reach for a glass of water on a bedside table. “Better!” Luffy says, shoving the glass into his hands. “We can’t see her yet though. The doctor lady says she needs to sleep.”

Sanji nods as much as he can, taking the offered glass from Luffy’s bandaged hands. He takes a slightly awkward drink before attempting to sit up. 

“No!” Luffy shouts and lunges on top of him, which knocks the wind out of Sanji as they both collapse onto the bed. “The doctor lady said you have to lie down! I already said that!”

Sanji can’t breathe with Luffy crushing his broken ribs, and he paws at his vest until Luffy gets the idea. “Sorry,” Luffy pouts, crossing his arms. “But you need to rest. Captain’s orders.”

Sanji lets out a sigh and looks over Luffy again, eyes lingering on the bandages wound tightly around every inch of his hands from the wrist down. “What happened to your hands?”

Luffy holds them out in front of him, letting Sanji get a better look. “I had to climb and dig a lot. And normally I like climbing and digging, but it was really, really cold. The doctor lady said I’m lucky I didn’t lose all my fingers. Oh!” He reaches around behind him again and deposits a mitten onto Sanji’s chest. “Here’s your mitten. I lost the other one, but it’s okay because the doctor lady said we can borrow hers.”

Sanji turns the mitten over, baffled by whatever Luffy’s talking about, then reaches for Luffy’s hands. “You had to dig?”

“To find you.”

Sanji feels a rush of guilt and opens his mouth to say something, an apology, an assertion that Luffy shouldn't have bothered, when Luffy pushes at his shoulder. “Oh, and you’re not allowed to do that again!”

“I don’t,” Sanji takes a deep breath and releases it, watching the wisps of it curl up in the cold, “Plan on getting hit by an avalanche again.”

“Good.”

Sanji turns Luffy’s hands over, feeling the coarse bandages running over his palms. He traces down along his fingers to find even the tips are fully sealed away from view by gauze. He tries to picture Luffy diving after him, kicking and clawing until his hands were ravaged. 

“What are you thinking about?” 

Sanji snaps his gaze up to Luffy who’s tilted his head in curiosity. Sanji lets go of Luffy’s hands, flushing as he looks away. “Nothing.”

“Liar,” Luffy says, pressing a hand to Sanji’s forehead. “Sanji always goes somewhere sometimes.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Luffy smiles. “I don’t know. Just that you’re not here sometimes, but you always come back so it’s okay.” Then his face twists in worry. “Unless it’s not a good place?” 

Sanji doesn’t think he has the words to describe what goes on in his head when his mind is gone. 

“Is your brain mean to you?” Luffy asks. 

“No, it’s not that.” Well, Sanji thinks, not all the time. “I was just thinking I need to stay more focused on reality even when it’s shitty.”

“If you want,” Luffy says. He squirms to stretch out onto the very edge of Sanji’s bed, and nearly pulls Sanji’s pillow out from under his head in an attempt to share it. “But it’s okay to pretend sometimes. When I’m on my special seat, I like to imagine all sorts of things! Like where we’re going next or how fun it’ll be when we find the One Piece.” He grins. “Is that what you do? Think about how much fun you’ll have when you find the All Blue?”

Sanji hasn’t thought of his fantasies as fun in a long time. “Kind of.”

“I bet it’ll be really cool!” Luffy says. “I don’t know a lot about fish. Just that they’re tasty. Hey, can we have fish when you’re able to walk and stuff? We can make a big feast for Nami!”

“Just for Nami-san?”

“Well, I get to have some, too. I’m the captain.”

Luffy pouts and Sanji has to laugh. “Hey, Luffy,” he says. “Tell me more about people from the North Blue.”

Luffy beams. “They really like fish! Especially when Sanji makes it!”

Sanji’s entire body hurts and Luffy’s poor hands grasped in his must be worn down to the bone, but he lets himself drift off, afloat on Luffy’s rambling dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> Characters who use fantasy and fairy tales to escape from painful experiences has always been one of my favorite tropes, and I ended up reworking this fic a few times just because I believe Sanji's relationship to fantasy is a bit more complex than just that it's good or bad. So I hope that came through!


End file.
